Male and Female Roles

Male and female roles have changed dramatically since the beginning of the 21st century. Men were known as the bread-winners. Their responsibility was to go to work and bring home money to take care of their family. While women stayed at home and took care of all the cooking and cleaning. The female role also consisted of bearing and taking care of all the children. Things have changed women can also get good jobs and bring home as much money as men and sometimes even more money than men. In a major step forward, women demanded and were granted the right to vote in the United States in 1920s.

Women should not have to stay at home and take care of the children, cook, and clean. Taking care of children alone should be considered a full time job, before adding cooking and cleaning. In the 1960s the invention of the birth control pill came about that let women control when they had kids. Contraceptives made planning a family around a career easier for women; careers no longer had to take a backseat to family. The great depression was hard on many families. Many men suffered losses of income and unemployment.

Women embraced this abrupt status change and rose to the challenge of finding work to support their family. Then the equal opportunities movement came about meaning that employers could not discriminate against women in hiring and promotion, and providing further protection for women in the workplace, even though men still make more money than women. Along with being the primary breadwinners a male’s role may consist of a few manly chores such as taking out trash, fixing cars, and cutting grass but, some males have taken on the female role. According to the U.

S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than one percent of dads were stay-at-home fathers in 2006. Men account for only 19 percent of single parents who live with their children. However, that still means there were 159,000 stay-at-home fathers as of 2006, according to the U. S. Census Bureau. There is a thriving community of stay-at-home fathers who are quite proud of their role in the family and support their “bread-winning” wives fully. Most women, who work full time with families, still have the primary responsibility of taking care of the children and home.

Women want to get out and have a life, not just stay at home and do chores. Women also want to take care of their children. Mothers want to be the one that see their baby’s first crawl or first word. Mothers want to get that child up in the morning, dress her and see her off to her first day of school. Mothers tend to be more nurturing than fathers. For example when a child fall off her bike for the first time a mother will probably run to that child and put a bandage on. Whereas a father will most likely try to brush it off and get the child to try again.

I totally agree that males should be the primary bread- winners. Then if a woman wants to work part time or go back to school she can. Sometimes taking care of the children and chores can be split in half between male and female, so no one feel that one is doing more work than the other. If a woman wants to get out the house sometime and have a life maybe she could join a social club, have a few girlfriends, or volunteer with different community organizations. I do not think a woman should have to be the primary bread- winner, the primary caregiver to the children, and still do most of the cooking and cleaning.

Some women have to be the primary breed winners. If a woman is left alone to take care of her children she have no choice but to become the primary bread-winner, the primary care giver, and do most of the cooking and cleaning because maybe she will not have any help. Even though a female is left alone all the work of taking care of children and a home still goes on. In 2005, nearly 4 in 10 babies in the U. S. were born outside of marriage according to the centers for disease control.

References

* Women’s Roles Vs. Male’s Roles in the 21st Century | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/info_8630273_womens-males-roles-21st-century.html#ixzz2RIpkA17n